Preminda Jacob, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Ahead of elections in India, a series of films that promote the ruling party’s right-wing ideology are seeking to influence voters. An art historian explains how the trend started.
Urbanisation in India is causing Adivasi communities to lose connections to ancestral lands – and to traditional knowledge and belief systems. Urban Hinduisation plays a big role in this.
Despite portraying sex workers as agents of social change, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ presents sex workers as worthy victims because they didn’t choose their disreputable fates.
‘Soup songs,’ a genre of Tamil breakup songs, refer to a man’s emotional state after being dumped and are full of blame for women. A more nuanced approach to love would be better for everyone.
A new Bollywood movie based on the story of an Indian entrepreneur who created affordable sanitary pads is helping to counter myths and taboos around menstruation.
In 1913, an Indian literary giant named Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-white person to win the literature prize. He wrote over 2,000 songs and, like Dylan’s, they still resonate today.
A gesture of desire, sexuality and the erotic, the screen kiss has often been subject to censorship and controversy. But for directors game to bend the rules, the kiss can be a subversive act.
It’s 101 years since the birth of Bollywood, the world’s largest and most vibrant movie industry and, of course, that’s more than enough time to mature and alter, to grow arms and legs. For some time…